Follow the Bird

New Slidedeck: The Professional & Spiritual Life of Yu-kai Chou

My Life Beyond Gamification

You may have noticed, I’ve been pretty open about my Christian faith on my websites and social profiles. It doesn’t mean I am asserting my own beliefs onto others, and I’m certainly not claiming that people who don’t have similar beliefs are worse people, but since this site is YukaiChou.com, I figured that Who I am (Taiwanese Third Culture Citizen), What I believe (Christian Bible), and What I do (Gamification Designer and Entrepreneur) are all topical and relevant here.

The above presentation is the most complete document of my life, where I lived, some obstacles I faced, companies I started and how I came to faith from a skeptic who used to challenge and make fun Christians. I certainly know how annoying it is to be preached upon with irrelevant circular logic and accusations of not having faith in something that just sounds ridiculous. I generally just offer my prayers when people seem to be in need, and generally they do appreciate it.

Nowadays, publicly proclaiming about one’s Christian faith is like the new walking out of the closet (though I do have a lot of empathy of the sufferings of those who do that, as well as admire their courage of doing so). You feel that people instantly start to judge you. Publicly sharing about my Christian faith has also denied me some opportunities. There have been companies that decided not to have a partnership with my website because the author of the site states that he is a Follower of Christ. Perhaps even some of you would stop reading anymore after you see this – sometimes I switch from being in a position of being respected to needing to defend my own intelligence. I’ve been on the skeptic side – I know (I used to think a lot of the most famous Christians are all actors. That’s worse than intellectual naivety – that’s morally dishonest).

The renowned author Malcolm Gladwell recently became a devout Christian too. Chi-Hua Chien, Partner of the top VC Firm Kleiner Perkins, has been a devout Christian for many years too. Clearly there has to at least be something there right?

Anyhow, I was invited by a Christian organization to talk about my experiences, so I did a talk like that for the first time in my life, and I thought I would share it on my blog too. If it offends you (I don’t see why it would – it just talks about my own experiences), then move on to other cool stuff in gamification that I write about. But perhaps it may help a few people as they deal with failure and struggles.

I’m generally (and honestly) quite busy to make time for everyone that reaches out to me on my site for chats, but I’m happy to make time and pray for anyone if you see value to it. Also, I’ve actually really into talking about hard and challenging questions people have, even if it is rude. So feel free to shoot them over.

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5 thoughts on “New Slidedeck: The Professional & Spiritual Life of Yu-kai Chou”

Yu-Kai, I applaud your boldness for coming out of the closet (so to speak). You are walking out Colossians 3:23-24, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ. You are an encouragement and blessing to the kingdom of God.

NicMacdonald Haha, thanks. Not everyone is like you. Of course, “beliefs” relate to intellectual understanding, so it’s definitely not ridiculous to connect intelligence and beliefs together. Hope all is well with you!

Personally I don’t tend to associate someone’s beliefs with their level of intelligence and well thought out arguments. If I find someone’s writings to be either engaging, inspiring, intelligent or a combination of all three then it doesn’t matter to me where or which side of the theistic fence they sit on.